Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival
20 – 23 July 2023 | Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate
For one long, sultry, summer weekend the temperature in Harrogate rises whatever the weather as the world’s hottest celebration of crime writing swings into town. Once tasted, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival leaves you on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next exciting chapter.
It’s the friendliest Festival with its feet firmly on Yorkshire ground. Hang out with your heroes, get an exclusive insight into the Next Big Thing, rub shoulders with the UK’s leading agents, editors and publishers. Be inspired and join in the drama at Agatha Christie’s old haunt: the luxurious Old Swan Hotel.
2023 will be an extra special year as the Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary. Get the dates in your diary – Thursday 20 to Sunday 23 July – as it would be a crime to miss it!
Multi award-winning crime novelist Vaseem Khan will be acting as the 2023 Festival Programming Chair, following in the footsteps of Ian Rankin, Elly Griffiths, Denise Mina, and Lee Child. Vaseem is known for his Baby Ganesh Agency series set in modern Mumbai and the Malabar House historical crime novels set in 1950s Bombay.
Special guests on this year’s incredible programme, curated by Vaseem with the programming committee, include icons of the crime fiction world, Val McDermid, Lee Child, Andrew Child, Lisa Jewell, Ruth Ware, Ann Cleeves, Jeffery Deaver, Lucy Worsley, S. A. Cosby and Chris Hammer.
The 20th anniversary programme will see a variety of acclaimed crime and thriller authors discussing the genre and influences on their writing, including Janice Hallett, Shari Lapena, Louise Candlish, Abir Mukherjee, Steve Cavanagh, Elly Griffiths, Ragnar Jónasson, Clare Mackintosh, Mick Herron, Will Dean, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Chris Brookmyre, and many more!
Praised and hailed by top authors and visitors the 2022 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival was a huge success, with the feedback and support received being simply phenomenal. Guests grabbed a pint of Yorkshire’s finest ale, relaxed in the hotel gardens, and dipped into an intoxicating mix of comedy, cabaret, heated debate, and scintillating socialising. It would have been a murderous misdemeanour to have missed it!
Vaseem Khan, Programming Chair for #TheakstonsCrime 2023
Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival
About Our Title Sponsor
Theakstons of Masham is probably most famous for its beer Old Peculier. A unique beer with a worldwide reputation, Old Peculier is in a class of its own, there is no other beer like it and therefore in presenting the beer as a brand to consumers it is always deliberately positioned in a way to reflect its unique status. The association with the world’s greatest Crime Festival is a perfect example of this.
Theakston Old Peculier has been the title sponsor of the Crime Writing Festival and the Crime Novel of the Year Award almost from day one. The status of the Festival in the world of publishing grows in stature year after year, greatly enhanced by the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the most wanted accolade in crime fiction.
Major Funder & Community Partner
Major Supporter
Regular Funder
Honorary Solicitors
